Speaking at the 60th birthday celebration of Governor El-Rufa\u2019i in Kaduna on Monday, the emir said no leader from the North was happy due to the myriads of problems that had plagued the region.<\/p>\n
According to him, \u201cwhen we talk about birthday, we talk about happiness. Just last week, someone asked me, are you happy? And I said I am not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe person was surprised. Nobody who is a leader in Northern Nigeria today can afford to be happy. You cannot be happy about 87 per cent of poverty in Nigeria being in the north. \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t be happy with millions of Northern children out of school. You can\u2019t be happy with nine states in the North contributing almost 50 per cent of the entire malnutrition burden in the country. \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t be happy with the drug problem, you can\u2019t be happy with the Boko Haram problem. You can\u2019t be happy with political thuggery. You can\u2019t be happy with all the issues; the Almajiri problem that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we wish Nasir a happy birthday, but we do not want him to be happy as a leader. Because you are happy when you think you have reached a state of delivering and taking your people to where you want them to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, because of the condition of Northern Nigeria, it almost correct now to say that, if you are seen as normal, if you are a governor in the North or a leader in the North, and you are seen as normal in the sense that you continue to do what your predecessors have been doing, doing the same thing, which has been normalised, then, there is something wrong with you, you are part of the problem. The real change in the north will come from those who are considered mad people, because you look around and say if this is the way we have been doing things, and this is where we have ended up, maybe we need to do things differently. \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we have populated the government with middle-aged men, maybe we need to try younger people, maybe we need to try women. If we have spent our money and time on physical structures, maybe we need to invest more in education of our children. Maybe we need to invest more in nutrition. Maybe we need to invest more in primary healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the truth is, if you look at what Nasir is doing in Kaduna, with 40 per cent of his budget in education, that is the only thing that is going to save the North. I know that, when we say these things, they don\u2019t go down well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been saying this for 20 to 30 years. If the North does not change, the North will destroy itself. The country is moving on. Quota system that everybody talks about must have a sunset clause.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason that people like Nasir stand up and they are nationalists is that they don\u2019t have any sense of inadequacy. You don\u2019t need to rise on being from Kaduna State or being from the North or being a Muslim to get a job, you come with your credentials, you go with your competence, you can compete with any Nigerian from anywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to get our Northern youths to a point where they don\u2019t need to come from a part of the country to get a job. And believe me, if we don\u2019t listen, there would be a day when there would be a constitutional amendment that addresses these issues of quota system and federal character.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rest of the country cannot be investing, educating its children, producing graduates and then they watch us, they can\u2019t get jobs because they come from the wrong state when we have not invested in the future of our own children.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, as we celebrate Nasir at 60, we need to celebrate him as a public officer who is addressing the core problems of his constituency. It is education, it\u2019s girl child education, it\u2019s women\u2019s right, it\u2019s child begging, it parental irresponsibility, demographic growth, it\u2019s managing a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious society and bringing them into one community where they are all citizens and he has done a lot that we can learn from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speaking at the 60th birthday celebration of Governor El-Rufa\u2019i in Kaduna on Monday, the emir said no leader from the North was happy due to the myriads of problems that had plagued the region. According to him, \u201cwhen we talk about birthday, we talk about happiness. Just last week, someone asked me, are you happy? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":10045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,14],"tags":[326,901],"class_list":["post-21535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-policy","tag-el-rufai","tag-muhammadu-sanusi"],"yoast_head":"\n